Re: Minor package description issues
Martin Eberhard Schauer wrote:
> Package: rawtherapee
> Version: 4.0.9-3
> Severity: wishlist
> Tags: patch
(You didn't CC d-l-e, but I saw it anyway!)
> Hi Philipp,
>
> the package description (1) seems to intend three paragraphs, but there is
> a formatting error to display it this way (2).
>
>
> Description: Free RAW converter and digital photo processing software
> RawTherapee is used to adjust some of the most often changed parameters when
> optimizing digital images. A normal user often just wants to adjust the white
> balance or brightness of a photo he took. Instead of using a big and expensive
> image editor you could use a small and fast tool like RawTherapee.
> More and more cameras also support RAW formats. RAW files usually offer higher
> color depth than JPGs. So the adjustments are done with the high color depth
> and then afterwards converted to or saved as JPGs. RawTherapee supports JPG,
> PNG and TIFF. All image processing is done in 16 bit/channel mode.
> Different to other RAW converters it can use EAHD as demosaicing algorithm.
> The raw loading engine of RawTherapee is based on dcraw.
>
> Moreover, the short descripition does not follow the developer's reference,
> section 6.2.2. (3) entirely. It should start with a small letter. And as the package
> is part of main, it is free software.
>
> For your convenience I copied a new version into this mail that addresses
> my "complaints". It changes the short description and adds the missing separators.
>
As usual I've got lots more nitpicks!
> Description: RAW converter and digital photo processing software
"RAW" isn't entitled to caps - it's not even a particular format; it's
a normal English adjective applied to a whole category of digital
image formats, so replace "RAW" with "raw image" (and minor variants)
throughout. (Annoyingly, even "raw image" can be a bit ambiguous,
thanks to raw disk-images, but we'll be okay as long as we keep the
photography reference).
Calling it a "[...] converter and [...] software" makes it sound as if
the converter part isn't software. I suspect this is a case where the
count-noun you were looking for was "program", but there's no need to
use a generic one when you can call it a "processor".
> RawTherapee is used to adjust some of the most often changed parameters when
> optimizing digital images.
Starting with a passive (especially "used to") is a bit awkward, and
it gets borderline ungrammatical once we also need to refer to these
"most often changed parameters". Which of the following does it mean?
* RawTherapee is a tool for use while you are optimizing digital
images, which lets you adjust some of the parameters you are most
likely to want to adjust.
* [I think there may be various foggy intermediate interpretations]
* RawTherapee is a tool to let you adjust some of the parameters
that someone else is most likely to have changed when they were
optimizing digital images.
I'll assume the first is right, and simplify to reduce the ambiguity.
> A normal user often just wants to adjust the white
> balance or brightness of a photo he took.
^^
Oh, because obviously female users are abnormal by definition!
> Instead of using a big and expensive
> image editor you could use a small and fast tool like RawTherapee.
If you were going to end up using second person anyway, you could have
used it to avoid the previous two problems as well.
What "big and expensive" image editors are there that I might use on
Debian, exactly? This is an obviously Windows-centric blurb...
> .
> More and more cameras also support RAW formats.
"Also" as well as what? Presumably the answer is "as well as JPEG",
but it could mean, say, "cameras as well as mobile phones". Just
leave the word out.
> RAW files usually offer higher
> color depth than JPGs. So the adjustments are done with the high color depth
> and then afterwards converted to or saved as JPGs. RawTherapee supports JPG,
> PNG and TIFF. All image processing is done in 16 bit/channel mode.
The official format name is "JPEG".
What's the distinction between "converted to or saved as"? Wouldn't
"converted to JPEG files" cover it? Oh, except that it isn't the
adjustments that are converted to JPEGs. And it goes on to say that
the output format isn't necessarily JPEG anyway.
> .
> Different to other RAW converters it can use EAHD as demosaicing algorithm.
> The raw loading engine of RawTherapee is based on dcraw.
"Different to" is deprecated, especially in en_US; and this is a job
for "unlike", anyway.
Is EAHD the Enterprise Architecture Hyperactivity Disorder, the
Electronic Arts High-Definition channel, or what? I suspect it might
be "Enhanced Adaptive Homogeneity-Directed interpolation", but Google
only knows that it's a demosaicing algorithm used by RawTherapee. Ah,
but wait - http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/Guide.html mentions that "the
EAHD interpolation option in previous version of UFRaw was just AHD
interpolation with color smoothing enabled". So that's at least one
other raw-converter that seems to be advertising itself as *avoiding*
the cobwebby old EAHD algorithm. I suspect this paragraph is
comparing RawTherapee to MS-Windows software from five years ago, and
that we'd be better off without it.
(Mind you, if I hadn't asked Google I would have guessed "demosaicing"
was a typo - why doesn't it behave like "panicking"?)
So my suggested revision looks like this:
Description: raw image converter and digital photo processor
RawTherapee is a tool for optimizing digital images. If you just want
to adjust the brightness or white balance of a photo you took, instead
of using a heavyweight image editor you can use a small, fast command
line tool like RawTherapee.
.
More and more cameras support raw image formats. These usually offer
higher color depth than JPEG, so adjustments are done with the high
color depth before conversion to an output format (RawTherapee supports
JPEG, PNG, and TIFF). All image processing is done in 16 bits per
channel mode.
ObWhyTheName: http://wiki.debian.org/WhyTheName#rawtherapee
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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